scholarly journals The Threshold Effect of Environmental Regulation, FDI Agglomeration, and Water Utilization Efficiency under “Double Control Actions”—An Empirical Test Based on Yangtze River Economic Belt

Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 452 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xuhui Ding ◽  
Ning Tang ◽  
Juhua He

In this study, the SE-SBM model considering undesirable outputs was used to measure the water utilization efficiency of the Yangtze River Economic Belt from 2006 to 2016, and the panel threshold model was used to estimate the impact of environmental regulation and foreign direct investment (FDI) agglomeration on water utilization efficiency. The results show that the water utilization efficiency presents a “U”-shaped trend as a whole, declines incrementally along the eastern, central, and western regions of the economic belt, and that the water utilization efficiency of the economic belt first converges and then diverges. In the estimation of the double threshold panel model, when the per capita GDP is lower than 2.635 or greater than 12.058 thousand dollars, the environmental regulation shows a significant positive effect. Otherwise, the environmental regulation barely shows a significant negative effect. FDI has not had a great impact on water resources utilization efficiency, and neither the “pollution aura” nor “pollution shelter” are significant. When the per capita GDP is lower than 2.184 or greater than 12.058 thousand dollars, FDI can significantly improve the water utilization efficiency through environmental regulation. Besides, the positive effects of technological innovation and foreign trade dependence are significant, and so are the negative effects of industrialization. Differentiated environmental regulation policies should be formulated; industrial upgrade should be promoted; innovation of water-saving and emission reduction should be strengthened in the Yangtze River Economic Belt.

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 2362 ◽  
Author(s):  
Decai Tang ◽  
Yan Zhang ◽  
Brandon J. Bethel

As one of the “three major strategies” for China’s regional development, the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) is under severe pressure to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, this paper analyzes the spatiotemporal disparities, and driving factors of carbon emissions based on energy consumption and related economic development data in the YREB over the 2005–2016 11-year period. Using the Stochastic Impacts Regression on Population, Affluence and Technology (STIRPAT) model, we empirically test the factors affecting YREB carbon emissions and key drivers in various provinces and municipalities. The main findings are as follows. First, per capita GDP, both industrial structure and energy intensity have positive effects on increasing carbon emissions. Second, per capita GDP and energy intensity have the largest impact on the increase of carbon emissions, and the urbanization rate has the largest inhibitory effect on carbon emissions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (23) ◽  
pp. 6571 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xuhui Ding ◽  
Zhu Fu ◽  
Hongwen Jia

Considering the undesirable output, this paper adopted the data envelopment analysis (DEA) model with the slack variable and super efficiency improvement, to measure industrial water utilization efficiency in the Yangtze River Economic Belt. The paper also creatively introduces urbanization level and urban primacy into driver factors’ estimation by stochastic and fixed Tobit models, exploring how urbanization characteristics affected the water utilization in regional industrial production. The results showed that industrial water efficiency has maintained an upward trend during the whole period, while most central and western provinces have shown a U-shaped trend of decreasing first and then rising. However, the industrial water utilization efficiency of central regions is the lowest, and the eastern regions are the highest, catching up with western regions. Utilization efficiency shows an overall convergence during the research period from 2005 to 2017. Regarding the factors’ estimation, both population urbanization and land urbanization negatively affected industrial water utilization efficiency, particularly blind expansion and disorderly development. The urban primacy meant the unbalance of urbanization, which would lead to urban diseases and pollution transfer, while the effects of urban primacy depended on the urbanization level. However, the utilization efficiency of industrial water did not become better automatically along with urbanization development; therefore, the scale and speed of urbanization should be scientifically formulated. The effects of the level of economic development, the advanced industrial structure, and the level of foreign investment are significantly negative.


Author(s):  
Ziqi Meng ◽  
Min Liu ◽  
Qiannan She ◽  
Fang Yang ◽  
Lingbo Long ◽  
...  

The Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region, including Shanghai City and the Jiangsu and Zhejiang Provinces, is the largest metropolitan region in China. In the past three decades, the region has experienced an unprecedented process of rapid and massive urbanization, which has dramatically altered the landscape and detrimentally affected the ecological environments in the region. In this paper, we analyzed the spatiotemporal variations of ecological conditions (Eco_C) via a synthetic index with analytic hierarchy processes in the YRD during 1990–2010. The relative contributions of influencing factors, including two natural conditions (i.e., elevation (Elev) and land-sea gradient (Dis_coa)), three indicators of human activities (i.e., urbanization rate (Urb_rate), per capita GDP (Per_gdp), the percentage of secondary and tertiary industry employment (Per_ind)), to the total variance of regional Eco_C were also investigated. The results showed that: (1) The Eco_C over YRD region was “Moderately High”, which was better than the national average and demonstrated obvious spatial variations between south and north. There existed fluctuations and an overall increasing trend for Eco_C during the study period, with 20% of the area being deteriorated and 40% being improved. (2) The areas with elevation below 10 m was relatively poor in Eco_C, while the regions above 1000 m showed the best Eco_C and had the most obvious changes (9.33%) during the study period. (3) The selected five influencing factors could explain 91.0–94.4% of the Eco_C spatial variability. Elevation was the dominant factor for about 42.4–52.9%, while urbanization rate and per capita GDP were about 32.5% and 9.3%.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 409
Author(s):  
Ruogu Huang ◽  
Xiangyang Li ◽  
Yang Liu ◽  
Yaohao Tang ◽  
Jianyi Lin

Water scarcity has put pressure on city development in China. With a particular focus on urban and rural effects, logarithmic mean Divisia index decomposition (LMDI) was used to analyze the water footprint per capita (WFP) of food consumption in five East China cities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Qingdao, and Xiamen) from 2008 to 2018. Results show that the WFP of food consumption exhibited an upward tendency among all cities during the research period. Food consumption structure contributed the most to the WFP growth, mainly due to urban and rural residents’ diet shift toward a livestock-rich style. Except in Beijing, the food consumption level mainly inhibited the WFP growth due to the decrease in food consumption level per capita in urban areas. Urbanization had less influence on WFP growth for two megacities (Beijing and Shanghai) due to the strictly controlled urban population inflow policy and more positive effects for other cities. The water footprint intensity effect among cities was mainly due to uneven water-saving efficiency. Meanwhile, Beijing and Tianjin have achieved advancement in water utilization efficiency.


Author(s):  
Darma Mahadea ◽  
Irrshad Kaseeram

Background: South Africa has made significant progress since the dawn of democracy in 1994. It registered positive economic growth rates and its real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita increased from R42 849 in 1994 to over R56 000 in 2015. However, employment growth lagged behind GDP growth, resulting in rising unemployment. Aim and setting: Entrepreneurship brings together labour and capital in generating income, output and employment. According to South Africa’s National Development Plan, employment growth would come mainly from small-firm entrepreneurship and economic growth. Accordingly, this article investigates the impact unemployment and per capita income have on early stage total entrepreneurship activity (TEA) in South Africa, using data covering the 1994–2015 period. Methods: The methodology used is the dynamic least squares regression. The article tests the assertion that economic growth, proxied by real per capita GDP income, promotes entrepreneurship and that high unemployment forces necessity entrepreneurship. Results: The regression results indicate that per capita real GDP, which increases with economic growth, has a highly significant, positive impact on entrepreneurial activity, while unemployment has a weaker effect. A 1% rise in real per capita GDP results in a 0.16% rise in TEA entrepreneurship, and a 1% rise in unemployment is associated with a 0.25% rise in TEA. Conclusion: There seems to be a strong pull factor, from income growth to entrepreneurship and a reasonable push from unemployment to entrepreneurship, as individuals without employment are forced to self-employment as a necessity, survival mechanism. Overall, a long-run co-integrating relationship seems plausible between unemployment, income and entrepreneurship in South Africa.


2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (5) ◽  
pp. 83
Author(s):  
Daouda Coulibaly

We analyse financial development’s impact on real gross domestic product per capita in seven West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) countries from 1970 to 2014. We assume that income and financial development process converge to USA, France and Japan’s levels respectively. An analysis of the unit root and cointegration tests revealed non-stationary and cointegrated series. Estimates are based on the Dynamic Seemingly Unrelated Regression method (DSUR). Our study shows that, (i) the effect of financial development on real per capita GDP improves in WAEMU countries as the latter converge financially to their respective levels in USA, France and Japan; (ii) the effect of financial development on real GDP per capita decreases in the WAEMU countries as they grow economically to reach USA, France and Japan’s income levels; (iii) the degree of the effect of financial development on real per capita GDP in the case of financial systems is stronger than that of the convergence of income.


2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Басовская ◽  
Elena Basovskaya ◽  
Басовский ◽  
Leonid Basovskiy

Econometric impact assessments of new technologies and human capital on a contribution of new technological ways to per capita GDP in regions of Northwest Federal District of Russia are received. Coefficients of elasticity of a contribution of new ways to per capita GDP on use of the new technologies estimated by armament the work equity new fixed assets and for use of the human capital estimated by a share of busy workers with the higher education are estimated. The use of new technologies is the most effective in St. Petersburg, in the Murmansk, Leningrad regions and in the Komi Republic. Efficiency use of new technologies in the Pskov region is the lowest. The human capital is most effectively in the Komi Republic, the Murmansk and Leningrad regions. Efficiency use of a human capital in the Pskov region is the lowest.


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